The dog pee story was a big lie

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Back in 2014, Lions tight end Joseph Fauria hurt his ankle away from the football field. He told the team and the media at the time that he injured himself trying to stop his puppy from peeing in the house. It was an unlikely story, and one that Lions fans didn’t really believe. There were rumors that he actually hurt himself playing volleyball, which seemed much more plausible. Well, Fauria finally fessed up to the lie.

“I hit the ball, 10 foot line, f--- yeah,” Fauria said on his podcast. “Everyone’s cheering, but when I come down, I come down on just ankle. Left ankle. Like, this most amazing, shocking pain that I’ve never felt in my entire life shoots up my leg and immediately I’m like, 'Career’s over.' First thing I thought, 'Season’s over, career’s over.' That’s how much it hurt.”

Fauria explained that he lied because NFL players get paid by the week and if he admitted to being injured doing something his contract said he shouldn’t be doing, the Lions could have refused to pay him.

Fauria did come back later that season but was never the same player. He was cut before the 2015 season and never played in the NFL again.

No love lost between these two

Cam Newton has the most radiant smile in the NFL. It turns out he also has the scariest smile. Look at how he smirks as he approaches Kelvin Benjamin here.

Benjamin came out last week and said he thinks he would have had a better career if he played with “any other accurate quarterback” instead of former MVP Cam Newton. That’s a crazy thing to say now that you’re catching passes from A.J. McCarron, Nathan “Four Picks” Peterman and Josh Allen, whose completion percentage at Wyoming is two points worse than Cam’s NFL completion rate.

An update on the case of the moth and the umpire

Yankees trainer Steve Donohue gave the lowdown on helping Bruce Dreckman with the huge bug that set up shop in his ear.

Donohue said he was expecting a little gnat, which is why he tried using a cotton swab at first. When he realized the bug had really burrowed itself into Dreckman’s ear, he told the ump to start fishing around in there himself. That’s when he pulled out what looked like a small bird.

And the reaction in the dugout?

“I can’t repeat the language,” Donohue said. “It was crazy. It was nuts. He had to be feeling terrible because this thing was big and flapping and I can’t imagine what was going on inside his head. Although, some of these umpires, I don’t know what’s going on inside their heads anyway.”

This isn’t even a Chinese knockoff?

Diehard #Jaguars fan Tim Richert says he ordered a custom Jags jersey from the NFL Shop. He claims he got this - with the #Patriots logo on the front. “I was devastated to see this atrocity even exists, and for it to happen to me was perceived as a slight to all Jags fans.” pic.twitter.com/mpoYIckTSr

I’ll tell you where I wish I was this weekend

Rangers winger Mats Zuccarello is moving his annual charity hockey game outdoors this year. They’ll set up a hockey rink in a soccer stadium in Oslo, where temperatures should be in the 60s. It sounds a lot better than the heat and humidity gripping the east coach.